Harrington Starr interviews Eleni Vlami on Diversity & the Role of Women in Fintech

Recruitment agency Harrington Starr’s podcast series, Women in Fintech, sits down with Meniga’s Head of Account Management for their latest episode.

Alicja Lei

04 May 2020

Leading this series is Nadia Edwards-Dashti, Founder & MD at the Harrington Starr Group. She began this series back in February 2019 where she talks with leaders & influencers from across the fintech landscape with the aim of drawing attention to women in fintech, mapping their journey, and inspiring women so that they may thrive in this field. Edwards-Dashti is also heavily involved in the Harrington Starr @womenoffintech campaign.

https://www.instagram.com/womenoffintech/

In this episode, Nadia asks Eleni to share her career journey, lessons that she has learned along the way, and her passion for mentorship. They also explore the differences of working in fintech for a Nordic-based company vs a UK company.

"In Iceland, laws guaranteeing that women and men who hold the same qualifications receive the same salaries are strictly enforced.

There are procedures that guard those standards even in fintech, where 85% is dominated by male employees.“

Eleni Vlami

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She talks about small but meaningful ways we can start to shift the gender balance in the industry.

“Finding a solution to make the workplace fairer for more people may seem hard, but it doesn’t have to be.

For example in Meniga, we pay attention to diversity ratios at events and conferences. We literally count how many women, and how many men are participating in events in terms of both attendees from our team, but also the keynote speakers and panelists.

We no longer participate in events that only have male speakers and panelists. We decline the invitation, and our marketing team serves the feedback on why we declined to attend the event.

There are achievable tasks you can do when it comes to promoting diversity. If you start with small things, you can see that you can make a huge difference in the company.“

Eleni Vlami

About Harrington Starr

Harrington Starr delivers high quality IT professionals on a permanent, retained, contract, and interim basis to the global financial services and commodity trading sectors. Specialising in Financial IT, Commodities IT, Buy and Sell Side Trading Systems, and Enterprise Technology, providing a full solutions suite to clients and candidates.